Instead, the newest venture launched by the woman who bills herself as “Baroness Michelle Mone of Mayfair OBE”, since the failures of her lingerie, fake tan and dodgy-diet-pills companies – this time alongside millionaire new boyfriend Doug Barrowman – has left workers out of pocket and been forced to rethink its ambitious plans.

Promoters were shocked to learn that despite toiling for Equi Capital over a five-month period, the company would pay the 3,000-strong workforce not the $2.5m it had advertised, but a somewhat reduced “bounty pool” of just £4,273.37 – equating to £1.40 per person, or around 1p a day.

Workers claim they have yet to receive even that derisory sum from Equi Capital, and have branded the business “a scam project”. Aggrieved promoters are now seeking redress as an inquisition into the failed cryptocurrency scheme begins.

The former lingerie tycoon can never be accused of lacking confidence. She stood side by side with Barrowman in London’s Dorchester Hotel earlier this year to announce the launch of Equi Capital, an initial coin offering (ICO) that sought to raise $75m. In exchange for contributing a minimum of $100,000 (£72,000) in a pre-sale, commencing on March 1, or upwards of $100 in a public sale starting a week later, investors would be issued with EQUI tokens.

“Equi is that disruptor in venture capital investing and, for me, represents the final evolution of a lifetime’s work spent in the industry,” founder Barrowman claimed. But Mone’s take was rather earthier:

Puff pieces in publications including The Telegraph, The Sunday Times and Forbes, some of which amounted to little more than hagiographies, helped raise awareness of the project.

“We’re not in it for money,” Baroness Mone told the Sunday Times in March, somewhat contradicting her comments of just a month earlier. “We’re doing this because we’re passionate about the cryptocurrency community.”

Indeed, in between the two articles Mone had declared herself to be “one of the biggest experts in cryptocurrency and blockchain”, despite having only taken an interest in the field five months earlier.

While many media outlets lapped up her soundbites unquestioningly, a handful were less convinced, expressing concern over both the viability of the project and the character of its co-founder.

Under US law, investments such as Equi Capital that promise investors a profit share constitute securities and fall under the jurisdiction of the SEC. The Equi team believed it had circumvented this restriction by ensuring its tokens weren’t sold to US investors, but there remain concerns as to the legality of offering tokens to unaccredited investors in the UK, where the FCA regulates the selling of financial services.

Equi Capital remained undaunted, however, and defiantly pressed ahead with its Initial Coin Offering. On 6 February this year, one month prior to its commencement, it announced a $2.5m bounty campaign.

“Bounty hunters” are effectively unpaid marketers, often from developing countries, who help to raise awareness online, particularly among the cryptocurrency community. In return for their efforts, they are remunerated in the form of tokens.

Thanks to the promised bounty package of up to $2.5m, Mone and Barrowman enticed a significant number of workers to promote Equi Capital online. Some of the workers posted adverts on social media platforms and others created YouTube videos, while yet more translated Equi marketing materials into Spanish, Italian, German, French, Korean, Portuguese, Arabic, Indonesian, Turkish, Russian, Japanese and Chinese.

On March 30, Mone announced to her Twitter followers that Equi Capital had raised $7m (£4.9m) in its first five days of fundraising.

It’s common for popular ICOs to sell out in a matter of hours or even minutes due to oversubscription from eager investors and the sense of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) this creates. One venture called Bancor raised $153m in three hours last June, for example, while BAT raised $35m in 30 seconds for a new web browser.

The Equi ICO was scheduled to last for one month, but within a week it had become clear that the team were nowhere near their ambitious $75 million target. The company extended its deadline, rather creatively describing the measure as “good news”, and continued to fundraise for a further two months until June 30.

Despite promising transparency, Equi failed to publicly update investors or bounty team members on its financial progress during this period. Behind the scenes, it was evident that the project would be unable to raise more than a fraction of its ambitious target, despite the concerted efforts of its thousands of bounty hunters.

While refunds were being processed, Equi fobbed off bounty hunters with excuses for over a month, before eventually informing them that Equi had changed its business plan and that it no longer involved using them or paying them as advertised.

(For perspective, 2% of the $7m that was raised in the first five days alone would have amounted to $140,000 in bounty payments. The total amount that was actually paid to the bounty hunters was around $5,500 between them.)

In a chat group for the Equi Capital bounty team, workers were told: “Our new concept will only allow participation from sophisticated investors. The change to the concept means that bounty members such as yourselves are not able to participate in the project going forward.”

The global workforce, which included a large contingent from developing nations, were left stunned at the outcome of a project led by a woman who some – perhaps not grasping the complexities of the British honours system – had mistakenly believed be a member of the Royal Family.

When Baroness Mone announced the launch of Equi Capital, a series of slick and professional promotional videos had done nothing to dispel the notion.

Her Twitter account during the fundraising period highlighting visits to Buckingham Palace, and in one YouTube interview she looked directly into the camera and introduced herself saying, “My name is Baroness Mone of Mayfair… I was made a Baroness by Her Majesty the Queen.” She went on to add “The House of Lords is the Upper House of Government and I’m there for life.”

Business partner Doug Barrowman runs a number of businesses including Watchdale Limited, a tax-avoidance subsidiary of The Knox Group which relocated to Panama in 2017. Prior to 2011 the company offered its clients “disguised remuneration” packages known as EBTs. In Scotland, of course, EBTs are best known for the HMRC legal case brought against Rangers Football Club which eventually resulted in its death and liquidation in 2012.

The Equi Capital bounty group on Telegram, where participants shared their marketing progress and filed claims for tokens they were owed, has now been deleted and bounty members who publicly complained about their treatment threatened with legal action in extraordinary exchanges reminiscent of a school playground.

The account administrator, operating on behalf of Equi, tried to assuage the fears of disgruntled bounty hunters, writing: “Our founder is a baroness and I can assure you she doesn’t lie” before dismissing their efforts altogether, claiming: “We raised all the money through our contacts FACT”.

On Aug 5, seven months after the launch of Equi Capital, Michelle Mone announced to her Twitter followers that she would be flying to Silicon Valley for Equi’s new “global” business launch, using the same term with which she had referred to the existing project when launching it back in January.

Equi Capital has now been hastily rebranded as Equi Global as the project attempts to conceal its failed token sale and prepare for a new ICO under a new banner. Having alienated a vast swathe of the cryptocurrency community as well as the investors who contributed to its ICO, Equi may struggle to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the second time of asking.

Doug Barrowman described Equi Capital as a way to “give everyone an opportunity to play in my world”. Those who still await any recompense for their time and effort may wish they hadn’t played at all.

Still, at least now we know why Baroness Lady Mone OBE is in such a prickly mood at the moment. We wonder how long it’ll be before she somehow contrives to blame the SNP and/or “vile cybernats” for her latest flop.

As someone who trades on the Forex market, I find bitcoin schemes very dubious. Some people become very rich (the top of the pyramid) and others lose the lot! Madam Moan is of the former! Good article Stu, keep up the good work

Michelle Mone and blockchain – the perfect partnership. Most people who wax lyrical about blockchain don’t actually understand what it is, and have just fallen for the weird hype behind it, making it the perfect marketing gimmick for shysters like her.

(I’m surprised she’s not started insisting folk pronounce her last name like “Monet”.)

No better than the scammers who pretend you’re owed a tax rebate from HMRC or a fake telephone company threatening to cut off your Talktalk or BT account!
They thrive on people’s desperation or greed and desire to make a fast buck. Disgusting and despicable – and she has the bare faced cheek to call Alison Thewliss an SNP moron?
Mone is not even fit to lick Alison’s boots and she ain’t no lady either!

Most media most of the time doesn’t fact check or scrutinise what they print. Plagiarism and regurgitating press releases is how they produce stories. This low quality ‘news’ effects the way ordinary folks view the world and ultimately make important decisions in their lives. We know well the effect on politics, but this dreadful media the UK now has pervades everything.

Journalism is a dying craft …. except on the likes of WoS … good well researched article Robert.

Thank God for Wings…again. Nobody else reports this sort of stuff. How on earth do these people get away with these shenanigans? It makes me despair. If only we could get this information to all the people of Scotland.
Keep up the good work.
X

Summary : the cryptocurrency bubble burst in Jan 2018. Michelle Mone was unable to attract investment and subsequently abandoned her project (leaving trail of unpaid workers who expected to be paid in the new crypto-tokens).

– I remember when this first came out, all the shitlords were calling it

TITCOIN

– ha! Forgot about that.

while I am here – I can exclusively reveal –

There’s nazi u boat filled with gold sunk in Loch Hourn – my grand-dad left me an old map he looted, er, liberated from the Deutsche-Reichs-Museum in 1945 … this is a once in a lifetime offer, available ONLY to Wings readers … have your credit card details to hand and wait for our call-back – get in quick before we flog it to the Daily Mail crowd!

Your judgement is probably right. But we all inherit what we are, and she is who she is, like it or not. (More often not.)

I reserve my strongest condemnation though for the people who showered her with honours and who damn well knew, or damn well should have known, who she is, but did it anyway, and solely because of her outspoken anti-indy stance in 2014.

This empty promotion of untalented people for political favours reveals starkly (at least to anyone willing to see it) the utter hollowness of the BritNat state.

It may still appear all-powerful on the outside, but in reality it is currently as brittle as an egg-shell. A concerted effort for indy could well push it beyond breaking point, and do so for all to see.

Was not La Moan appointed by David Cameron, ex- Prime Minister and spinster of this parish, some sort of small business tsar, to tell us plebs how to run (a small) business successfully, during his tenure @ No. 10?

Anyone also notice – pure coincidence, of course – that there has been a recent growth in adverts (sponsored by HMG, I think, but could be wrong) which are warning pensioners notably (and others) not to be taken in my telephone scammers – the result of which may involve them losing thousands in their pension pots. Small comfort for Equi Capital promoters @ 1p a day (not yet received), I know.

‘Our founder is a baroness and I can assure you she doesn’t lie’. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…

Honestly, I could laugh at that for days. The most corrupt, inept people in the UK are made baronesses and ‘lords’. The house of Lords is literally packed to the rafters with these uselsss crooked nobodies who have been rewarded by one government or another. The kind of vacuous parasites who will happily sell out Scotland (their own country) for an ermine robe. Some names spring to mind, Danny Alexander, Nicol Stephen, Alastair Darling, and so on.

It goes like this; ‘ok I’ll completely betray my country and the people of Scotland, but I want a title and a seat in the house of Lords. Oh, and an OBE frae Lizzie windsor.

If the honours system had any integrity (it doesn’t), then Michelle Mone should lose her titles – all of them.

And please tell me, just why a complete no hoper is given a seat in the house of Lords – oh, that’s right ‘Better Together’, keeping Scotland under English colonial rule.

I hope somebody somewhere with bags of money takes the whole lot of them through every court in the world. Con-men, no more, no less.

You know I thought this kind of scam had been stopped, but no, it’s just gone high tech.

This is how they did it in the ‘olden days’.

‘Hi, I’m Larry, a Billionaire investor. People used to say to me, ‘Larry just how do you do it? So just for you, I’m going to let you in on my secrets. Just fill in this coupon and mail your cash order for $300 and you too* could share** in my lifestyle’. This is a time limited offer, send your money NOW!’.

@Merkin Scot – most of it was returned (minus transaction fees, the tightarse pricks) to investors forcibly, and since the ETH they invested had dropped in value while it was with Equi many people lost as much as 60-75% of their investment in USD terms. Nobody knows what happened with the rest.

I guess we’ll never know what kind of salary, expenses, perks, etc. the Busty Baroness and her greaser stud were taking out of this dog – in real money not bogus crypto bucks – which is what really counts.

The apparent freebie to the Med clearly is a clue.

In the real world Ponzis are a crime and you get serious crowbar hotel time for pulling one.

But the web is still the Wild Wild West.

So no need for a registered prospectus vetted by a securities commission, independent accountants, or full, true and plain disclosure to the minority investors, I guess.

So glad you nailed her . She is such a disgrace to her roots, culture and country.
The ethnic cleansing of her personality is complete to the point she would be easily mistaken for a unionist with no heritage of east end glasgow.
Better she stays in E1 and develops here essex tang..she can do less harm there.

If she is going to Silicon Valley for this launch, the “product “ will presumably be sold to US citizens, so the SEC can have her this time! I’m sure the inmates of the US Federal prison system will be ever so impressed by her title.

Good article, Robert. The House of Lords is a disgrace to modern democracy and belongs in the dustbin of history.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission might be an answer though it’s doubtful whether much reconciliation could be achieved after the catalogue of lies and mendacity Scotland has suffered over the centuries.

I am ashamed that Mone is Scottish. She is one in a long line of rags to riches Scots who, in their scramble to the the top, have forgotten where they came from. All that privilege and yet they vote for cuts to working tax credits for the poorest in society.

Like all self publicists they have to play at poverty again to show how much they care. Mone’s daughter will be featured in a Channel 4 programme living in Bridgetown in order to “confront her privilege”.
It’s just more poverty porn. It’s an insult to those who have to live in poverty all the time to try it out for a week knowing you’re going back to a life of luxury in a few days.
If she really wants to do something to help poor Scots, she could campaign for independence.

This is a superb piece, it puts to shame most of the MSM in Scotland. They wouldn’t go near this with a bargepole such is their fawning of people like Moan. I’m not even sure there is anybody at the Herald or Scotsman that could write an article as good as this.

This is real investigative journalism not the shock headline anti-SNP trash that inhabits most the Scottish MSM.

Mind you if the Rev can just find a Kremlin angle someone at the Herald may take an interest.

I looked up the Canadian example of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission out of interest. Oh dear. What a farce that seems to have been. Organised for the benefit of the colonists who now want to “move on”.

Wikipedia article has dire warnings about the shortcomings of the article (which suggests it is probably true), overlaid with dire appeals for money.

Given the collusion with the neocon agenda I won’t be donating to Wikipedia now. But the artcle is still readable.

She lives on the Isle of Man, I hear. No inheritance, wealth, gift, death, capital gains or insurance premium taxes or stamp duties.

She and her boyfriend are entitled to live wherever they like of course, but as a proud Scot – or even a patriotic British one, since she’s a Baroness-for-life-and-don’t-you-forget-it – wouldn’t you expect her to want to contribute to the upkeep and running of the UK rather than being non-dom? Or is that just me. 😀

Oh David Cameron. What have you done, dishing out perrages like confetti to all and sundry …

Superb article Robert . Deserves to be seen by those used only to the comic book MSM. I am embarrassed to be paying my taxes in a polity that promotes such people like this and rewards them with ludicrous titles and stoat coats .

I still recall with a mixture of behind the couch cringe and gut busting hilarity as Ms Mone making her first speech in the Lords quoted the George Benson Whitney Houston hit “The greatest love of all”

Y’know that Scottish thing we all hate when somebody from Scotland reinforces the English Myth that Scots are stupid by actually being even more stupid than we thought possible, and then we think no! it’s not us, they must think she’s bright if she’s been made a Baroness so they’re even stupider than she is

And we sigh with relief and superiority that a Numptie is a Numptie the world over but thank God Scotland may just possibly have less of them ….Maybe? we hope? Oh no not again don’t let her speak somebody stop her

Glad to hear of Keith Brown’s rebuttal unit.
It can start by slapping dour auld Broon about. The man who promised to end boom n bust, who had 13 years at the top of government yet did not plan for a rainy day. His calamitous economic policy of keeping middle England happy led to ultimate disaster as the economy crumbed to dust & those communities which still bore thatcher’s legacy were rewarded for their unquestioning support with a brand new tory government – good job Gordon you useless better-together lacky.

I thought the baroness was into mens suit recycling? Still it is hard to comprehend that someone can crawl so low into the gutter and think they smile of roses. Unelected, yet votes for universal credit condemning women and children in particular into poverty collecting £300 as she does so. The sort of person Davidson, (who she? )tompkinson and co look up to.

Nothing to “mone” about with Keith Brown’s excellent idea of a rebuttal unit. Let’s hope he starts with the SNP hierarchy every single time they are live on air and with no exceptions. Up until now it has been pretty dire.

Let’s watch and record how well they are doing and feed back to Keith.

All well and good, Capella, and I’ve no doubt Keith has the right idea. The real problem, of course, is that his rebuttal service will suffer the same problems as does the Holyrood Parliament website and the SNPs party website and the SG website.

Joe & Josephine Public are, unlike we Wingers, not political anoraks and will probably not touch it, even with someone else’s bargepole. This though will be a great source of insider information for the YES movement to use. Not just to go and read but to refer Joe & Josephine Public to in order to get the truth to negate the propaganda.

As I’ve pointed out so often in the past the SNP can hand out reams of press releases to the corrupt SMSM and propaganda broadcasters but they cannot force then to print and broadcast them.

Then, of course, they cannot prevent the SMSM and broadcasters spinning the information, as they so often do, while looking innocent and saying, “Us … biased? No way! We are the professional Journalists and that lot’s just social media and social media is BAAAAAAAD.”

Why am I reminded of the old joke about a cub reporter, about to interview Charlie Haughey, who as Taoiseach of Rep of Ireland, had a vague understanding of the concepts of ‘truth’ & ‘honesty’. ‘When he’s scratching his ear’, he’s lying, when he’s rubbing his nose, he’s lying, etc

‘How do I know when he’s not lying’ asks the cub. ‘When his lips are not moving’.

@ Robert Peffers – I hope Keith Brown is hiring a team of ferrets to do the hard work. One advantage will be the sheer volume of lies that are exposed. Keeping a record of media failure will be useful.

@ footsoldier – you’ll never get promoted to a general by forming a circular firing squad. Wouldn’t it be more useful to target the Unionist opposition than the only independence party?

If you put a turd in a paper bag and place it on someone’s doorstep, then set fire to the bag and ring the bell, then the person will most likely come to the door and stamp on the the burning bag, covering themselves in shit.

” … That woman has a say in the running of the UK.
THAT is the scandal.”

Well no it isn’t Ghillie – the scandal is twofold in that there is an unelected head of state who is claimed by Westminster as being sovereign and an unelected upper chamber. It is very, very difficult to find out how many Lords there are but it is estimated as over 800. It is the largest unelected government body in the World.

By contrast there are exactly 650 elected Members of the House of commons.

There should be no unelected persons, including royalty, in the government.

Warren Buffett (who knows a thing or $84 billion about investing) has a view on Bitcoin;

‘Unlike buying stocks, bonds or real estate, buying bitcoin is not an investment…

That’s because it lacks intrinsic value…

If you buy something like bitcoin or some cryptocurrency, you don’t have anything that is producing anything… You’re just hoping the next guy pays more. And you only feel you’ll find the next guy to pay more if he thinks he’s going to find someone that’s going to pay more…
It’s a mirage basically…The idea that it has some huge intrinsic value is just a joke in my view…You aren’t investing when you do that, you’re speculating’

It’s quite sad to see so many people having a dig at Oor Michelle, I mean, come on, no, I should say, FFS! that day she got made a Baroness of what-evs? she actually went to the extra time and bother of putting on more make-up to make herself look even more beautiful than she usually is.

If you buy something like bitcoin or some cryptocurrency, you don’t have anything that is producing anything… You’re just hoping the next guy pays more. And you only feel you’ll find the next guy to pay more if he thinks he’s going to find someone that’s going to pay more…

Which sounds like what are laughing some of the largest companies in the world. Google, facebook, twitter produce absolutely zero real value to the world’s economy. They advertise for others that’s it.

Benefit to the world (and us) is precisely zero, other than entertainment value. All bubbles that will eventually burst when people get bored with them or decide to take their privacy more seriously which is after all their main commodity.

That’s right it’s your privacy that they sell and makes them so valuable. People will soon get fed up of that and then boom! Another bubble burst.

@Muiris who said at 9:33 pm:
“Why am I reminded of the old joke about a cub reporter, about to interview Charlie Haughey, who as Taoiseach of Rep of Ireland, had a vague understanding of the concepts of ‘truth’ & ‘honesty’. ‘When he’s scratching his ear’, he’s lying, when he’s rubbing his nose, he’s lying, etc‘How do I know when he’s not lying’ asks the cub. ‘When his lips are not moving’.

I don’t appreciate anti-Irish jokes.

So I fixed that for you !

“Why am I reminded of the old joke about a cub reporter, about to interview Margret Thatcher who as PM of the UK, had a vague understanding of the concepts of ‘truth’ & ‘honesty’.

‘When she’s scratching her ear’, she’s lying, when she’s rubbing her nose,she’s lying, etc‘How do I know when she’s not lying’ asks the cub. ‘When her lips are not moving’.

I buy the “National” every day and am committed to contributing to its survival and expansion. But it will only find its own niche in the press jungle if the reporting standard meets that of “the Rev” whose articles, in recent months, exposing the hypocritical actions of Unionist supporting outlets have been truly inspirational.

One could only speculate as to the conditioning involved to engender quite such a degree of cultural self-loathing.

Aye Michelle – we know you can’t help yourself but read thro this, and get all hatey and resentful – scottishness is about tartan, shortbread and roamin in the gloamin coz that’s what yer telly tells you. That’s why it’s called a telly! Coz it tellsye! Dear oh dear, I do despair.

ROBERT PEFFERS….
Whit … UTTER PISH is this …are you a NUMPTY?
Are you Nicola Sturgeons No 1 ENEMY are you out to WRECK this site by Drip Drip Drip Britishness???
Are you a PROUDSCOT BUT what exactly do you mean @ 9.05
By JOEand JOSEPHINE public ????!!!!????
Not wance but TWICE tae…
You POLTROON You
Every bugger KNOWS it’s JOCK & JEANNIE public….

@Thepnr
Totally agree, and a few including me posted that in The National.

Average’s tweet though is even funnier when I think about it. here it is in full:

“browsed a few SNP “fact check” articles & they fall at the first hurdle: no data audit-trails, no explanation of how apparently conflicting claims can be made, no links to the primary sources that would back up their own assertions seems they don’t know how fact-checking works”

which, errr, has no links to the primary sources that back up his assertion, no data audit trails, no explanation of how apparently conflicting claims can be made.

Yesindyref2 @ 12.58
Haw you,,, I was working on being the biggest bitch in the building…
But that rebuttal was bloody good,just the right amount of sarcasm and style..
Only question is…. Is it mibbi a wee bit tooo… Stylish for a thread about the Baroness??

If I recall England voted to leave the EU after listening to advice from people like this unelected woman who runs or country
We were told the lies that the EU were selected and corrupted. BUT we accept 800 lords unelected and some possibly only there for there own benefit. What a set of idiots we are

Quick! Let’s have a sweepstake to guess what BBC Shortbread’s Daily Scottish Disaster will be today.

NHS, Education, Police, or Environmental catastrophe? …. all good contenders, but I’m going with some Urban deprivation story… Our roads are full of potholes because poor kids are ruining their teeth eating tarmac on the way to school, that is now held in a tent because the real school has upped sticks and moved to Europe, leaving a paper trail of unpaid bills which the SNP must mitigate immediately.

Now for the weather. It’ll be lovely everywhere, but pish wherever you are, and it’s all Nicola Sturgeons fault.

Y’know I haven’t listened to radio shortbread or watched BBC news coverage for about four? Five years? Lost count really.

Onywise. And this is just a wee bit of advice for them if they’re scrolling these pages? There are very, VERY, real crises occurring all throughout the UK. Failures of institutions and services. Society pulling itself apart and such. I realise the buck stops with your paymaster and all, but just so you’re aware? People REALLY can see see the difference between a manufactured crisis and a real one.

Your paymaster has screwed up biblically and all the bandwidth on the planet can’t cover up the effects. Worse. Their attempts to do so simply make their media outlets look stupid, incompetent and utterly compromised. Repeating/rehashing the snpbaddery of the day isn’t going to save or change lives. Avoiding challenging the state and other political leaders, their parties and policies in Scotland? That’s not going to keep the UK together. It’s driving it apart and not just politically, but also societally. Oh, and it lets the real culprits off the hook.

“No! No! We have no need to inform Jock & Jeannie Public of anything, because they know all about it already – It is Joe and Josephine Public who do not know and we need them to read the truthful version about the two kingdoms.

As to my health problems – I have to fast tonight until tomorrow mid-day before yet another blood test.

Then I’ll need to wait again for them to assess the results and decide what treatment, if any, will be effective. It seems a long drawn out process.

” … That’s how low the British Establishment has sunk.
On it’s knees, honestly, we’re kinder to animals.”

You have hit a very large nail on the head, ahundredthidiot.

Just yesterday I was reading the Britnat propaganda reports about the statistics showing the rates of homelessness in the United Kingdom’s two unequal kingdoms. Then I came across an item that began rather a long time ago.

The authorities had finally re-homed a horse that a woman had been keeping in her own house because she had no suitable alternative place for the animal.

Now, throughout the long saga the animal was never made homeless to live on the streets yet there are thousands of people, unhoused by the authorities but not re-housed by the authorities.

@ Breeks – BBC Scotland website was practically slavering yesterday over the prospect of schools going back and all the problems the MSM can moan about.

First there are teacher vacancies in schools believe it or not, then there’s the P1 testing which must stop and, best of all, the EIS is demandng a 10% pay rise for teachers so there may be strikes to look forward to.

A whole year of “blow for Sturgeon and Swinney must resign” to look forward to. It’s their flagship policy, don’t you know, and they must be judged on it.

What exactly do you have to do to have your life peerage revoked? Talk about tawdry.
————————————————————-
Allow Scotland it’s independence! All the Scottish peers won’t belong to the UK and I guess will be kicked out. They don’t want to loose their gravy train and their titles, letter heads etc, so they’ll fight it tooth and nail. So glad they don’t get a say if they don’t live in Scotland.

What a brilliant article Stu, this is truly a vile woman. And when things don’t work out for her in her personal and business life its somehow the fault of those nasty Nats. Here’s a message stay in London we don’t want you back, Scotland is a better place without people like you.

Very simple, very polite, very constructive, and powerfully effective. I hope Keith Brown is taking notes and has something similar in mind for his Rebuttal Service.

Then again, the UK’s media are swamp dwellers, and they would simply dispute the figures and appoint some useful tool to make up their own figures to suit their own narrative.

Denmark looks so clean and honest, Fox News looks grubby and nasty, but here in Scotland we have something worse… we have “sophisticated nasty”, a hostile broadcasting monopoly with an anti-Scottish imperative, and with no effective right of reply.

I’ve been saying it since before 2014, by now we should have had Scotland holding EU mini-summits, festivals and workshops, and have the whole place crawling with European Broadcasters and news-hounds. It still isn’t too late, but still we dither and procrastinate…

Is the BBC Scotland head of news still the person described by a high court judge as defensive, evasive and not a reliable witness?

BBC Scotland describe Scotland double the growth figures of the UK as matching the UK’s, so I guess the person is still in the job.

BBC Scotland controller still has confidence in someone a high court judge didn’t believe was a reliable witness. What does that say about the running of BBC Scotland. Certainly rebuilding my trust, a head of news that a judge doesn’t even believe.

That Fox report obviously reminded me of the Reporting Scotland style. Sitting spouting basically nonsense. Both Fox and BBC will have viewers who still believe the guff.

Now what we need is a pleasant polite member of the Scottish Government doing a rebuttal video in the same style. Shite from JBird, followed by John Swinney (would be ideal) saying, “well actually, Jackie, that’s not true” and giving some facts and truths.

Get them flying around Twitter, in this Danish style.

It is pretty funny that the US, of all places, would try to be critical of Denmark, of all places.

The BBC is still smarting over recent events. I noticed in the BBC intro to the Cliff Richard story not that he was innocent or that there was no foundation but, if I remember correctly, there was not enough evidence to bring charges. You know wink, wink, say no more!

If anyone here is still paying their licence tax to the BBC that might put in a complaint concerning Jackie Bird’s ‘Scotland is roughly matching England’s GDP’ when in fact this is the reality, ‘The Scottish Government issued revised figures for GDP in the first three months of the year showing it grew by 0.4%, twice the UK rate of 0.2%.’

Switched radio on for the 8 O’Clock headlines and caught the tail end of a couple people ripping into what I suspect was the TV programme that Mone’s daughter was on. No idea who the people were but no doubt they will be getting a Baronial “moron” tweet too.

Frankly the evidence that she is a such a bad businesswomen is her decision to opt for investing in BITcoin as opposed to TITcoin………..Hello what is your background in business…..BRAS so……big Doh for you Michelle !!!

This message was brought to you by someone who always opts for the obvious childish comparison…cannae help myself….especially when subject matter is such a non entity……also accept BRAS was not her forte but then neither is BITcoins …rest my case.

Freedom of the press unfortunately comes with the problems of freedom of the press to tell lies then protect themselves behind the laws of freedom of the press by refusing to disclose the *sources* or the *critics* or the *insiders* who the press claim to have given them the information they claim are facts the have *uncovered* or *investigated* or *fact checked*

It’s not a good system is it when the press demand freedom but no one else should have it because basically the propagandised system of government pretendy democracy would completely break down and the populace would end up exposed to too much truth and that would never do

The British government used this system to conquer half the world then taught the Americans to use it and now the Americans are buggering it all up by going too far so that now nobody believes anything anymore (quite rightly) but it leaves a new problem for proper democratic truth to hold on or indeed prosper which has led to the basic polarisational (I don’t like you) dirty politics which is where Scotlands politics is right now

In some other countries this has led to violence, now we’re not too keen on that solution in Scotland we kinda like the truthful legal approach if we can get it but in the current climate of political lie telling it seems like a mammoth undertaking to change the system but sorted it has to be

How and who can do it is the question or do we continue to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and by opposing end them

Mmmm. See one or two titles picking up on the Rev’s EU ref poll results. And bless. They’re all putting their own preferred spin on the outcomes and options.

How and ever, worth pointing out to these folks that Scotland’s population only require one referendum to remain in the single market and customs union and it also has the added bonus of wiping out the UKs parliamentary democratic defecit. Win win really. 🙂

@ronnie

Don’t know if that’ll cure chronic back pain, but I’m all for the adventure of it. 😀

The Mone story is yet another rags to riches saga from so-called stars who just have to keep on coming back to tell us how well they’ve done. Lady Mone apparently comes from Dennistoun but that’s much too trendy so Brigton gets the honour.

We had Lulu telling us that if she stayed in Glasgow she would probably have ended up married a bus conductor, she legged it to the Big-Smoke & appeared on an election platform with Maggie Thatcher. Also on the same platform backing Maggie was expat Molly Weir. Connolly of course became a born-again Deeside laird, court-jester & buddy of Lord Jack MacConnell, castigating our parliament as “Pretendy!” as if his own life wasn’t exactly that. The great pity is that that keep buying return tickets.

It’s the chondroitin apparently, joint fluid or something. Buy 2 get 1 free. We’ve been taking it for years now, and it really makes a difference. I’m now as limber as a 2 year-old! In training for next years Ayr Grand National. Wish me luck.

@Nana
My wife’s gor osteo-arthritis (and osteoporosis) and they help her, including her knee. I was diagnosed with o-a, but not sure if it’s right as my legs are now right as rain, though I still take it a bit easy up and down stairs. I swear by them, it was a customer recommended them to me as I hobbled in to see him 3 or 4 years back. He used to hillwalk as I did.

I’d say the odds are pretty well evens there’ll be a YES before the next race. And TC, I intend breaking down the fences, saves all that jumping. No doubt with one or three Isle of Jura (off the back of the exciseman’s van) inside me. The angels would approve.

I always see unionists (particularly unionist men) defending figures like Mone and JK Rowling with such vigour. It seems well-heeled unionist ladies give them boners in their big boy UJ pants. But this sense of chivalry quickly dies when they are talking about the First Minister.

Gotta’ love how she professes faux pride in her background and people. If that’s so, why wasn’t she made Baroness of the East End? And why isn’t she living among “her people” there?

That’s because her people are the posh, rich twats in London. Just one of the many rogues in a nation that Burns so perfectly described.

This issues reflects the heart of the matter that we face, as we seek effective political representation for Scotland, i.e. the misreporting of performance information. Tories are not the same as conservatives, who tend towards a cautious antipathy to change. Tories, however, don’t tend to feel morally bound to truthfulness and honesty, are antagonistic to change and actively promote the interests of inherited privilege.

This one appears simply to be a self-serving social climber.

The Malevolent Side of Human Nature
A Meta-Analysis and Critical Review of the Literature on the Dark Triad (Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy)

Abstract

The term dark triad refers to the constellation of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Over the past few years, the concept has gained momentum, with many researchers assuming that the dark triad is a prominent antecedent of transgressive and norm-violating behavior. Our purpose in this meta-analytic review was to evaluate (a) interrelations among narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy; (b) gender differences in these traits; [c] how these traits are linked to normal personality factors; and (d) the psychosocial correlates of the dark triad. Our findings show that dark triad traits are substantially intercorrelated, somewhat more prevalent among men than women, predominantly related to the Big Five personality factor of agreeableness and the HEXACO factor of honesty-humility, and generally associated with various types of negative psychosocial outcomes. We question whether dark triad traits are sufficiently distinct and argue that the way they are currently measured is too simple to capture the malevolent sides of personality. Because most research in this domain is cross-sectional and based on self-reports, we recommend using a cross-informant approach and prospective, longitudinal research designs for studying the predictive value of dark triad features.

@Heather McLean
I had one of the BT ones recently, I accused her fairly quickly of being a scammer and she asked ‘do I sound like a scammer?’ to which I replied that scammers were human beings and sounded like them. I then pointed out we haven’t had a BT line in a couple of decades. Then she switched track and said I needed a licence from BT to get on the internet no matter how I connected. I laughed uproariously at that one and informed her nobody needed a license to get on the internet she hung up.

The worry is those who don’t realise or have a BT line and believe the guff. These scammers don’t need to hit a very high percentage. I like to keep them talking to limit the time they have to go after others and of course to cost them more.

A lot of folk would have to put effort into putting links to it on the Facebook, Twitter, etc. pages of non-Indy folk, otherwise no point to it. You’d soon see it being blocked all over so it would be a never ending battle of getting different folk doing it to keep it in view.

Easy to make money when you can bin your limited company and all it’s debts whilst the company never owned any assets, they were your personal property, and the workers and other business creditors are left to flounder.

I’ve seen companies go down due to repeat offenders failing to pay their bills, employees left unpaid (although the National Insurance Fund WILL step in, THAT takes time and there is a maximum amount which often comes nowhere near what is owed) personal debt of employees can be left unpaid, leading to losing your home, car (essential for travelling to work these days)and the resultant suffering of their families too.

The rich laugh all the way to the bank, the workers have to go to the food bank, literally.

I saw SO much of this when working for HMRC. Company directors is big houses with fancy cars, ripped off customers and employees losing their homes. It sickens me, and she is rewarded by being allowed into the House of Lords??

I think I got one bounced last night for doing an imagined dialogue of Michelle and her cronies at a Glasgow bingo hall – it was a Limmy ripoff anyway.

Seriously though – this woman clearly suffers from extreme narcissism and that is one component of the psychopath (read some Robert Hare) – the shameless, no guilt, no empathy people who love money and power and just -fucking-around- with normal people. It is a condition which runs at 6% of the population, but at around 20% across all who work in finance – it is not known what the level is at higher levels of finance or in politicians. And of course, the jails are full of them.

Our society is plagued by psychopaths – and there are two types

– successful and clever – you get to be a politician, banker, CEO etc
– unsuccessful and stupid – you end up in jail, sooner or later

They have a qualitatively different mentality from that of normal people, (- let’s call them Full Human Beings) – they have brains with a different structure, with unactivated regions (- “not playing with a full deck”). When you deal with them you should not think you are talking to another person, somewhat similar to yourself – you are looking at a crocodile in human form. A lesser thing, but more dangerous. A predatory sub-species. They may be the source of all those vampire stories, psychologically speaking.

The most disgusting thing about Michelle is her brazen “obviousness” – like we can’t detect her fakery – the dyed hair, the veneers on the teeth, the shorter nose, the tits that ride higher than they did 10 years ago, the subtly different shape to her face – but it all largely goes to waste because the woman is so skullsplittingly fucking stupid – she says ridiculous crap and expects us to believe it. She is also lacking in any self-awareness – her internal dialogue is a blank slate.

Makes me think of that old song – Mack the Knife

“oh the shark has
pretty teeth dear
and he shows them
pearly white …”

That Cornton Vale is to be shut is probably good news for Michelle, long-term.

I have been watching this ICO for a long time. He always had not high ratings of rating agencies:https://cryptototem.com/equi-capital-equitoken-ico/
ICObench established a rating: 2.6
it says a lot!
I do not understand why people are so naive and continue to invest in adventurous projects with blondes with big breasts!

I’m guessing here that Michelle Mone hasn’t watched the “The Wolf of Wall Street”. Clue to Lady Mone – it didn’t end well for The Wolf.

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Mundell said the withdrawal bill would return powers to Scotland, it didn't, he said he'd amend the bill so it would, he didn't, he said the Lords would amend it so it would, they didn't, he said he would resign if NI got a bespoke deal, they did, he didn't.. #ScotRef /1